By Ryan Randazzo | The Arizona Republic
An executive with the company planning a trash-to-energy power plant in Glendale was previously involved with a utility company in Indiana that was forced to turn its operations over to the city after years of contentious debate.
Mark Branaman is a vice president with Chicago-based Vieste LLC, which has a deal with Glendale to lease city land, build a trash-sorting facility and then a power plant that will turn trash into electricity.
Branaman also was a central character in a years-long dispute in Lawrence, Ind., where in 2001, Mayor Thomas Schneider signed a no-bid deal that gave the city’s water and sewer utilities to a company where Branaman was a principal, according to an investigative series of stories in the Indianapolis Star. Six years later, the company had to return the utility to the city.
Branaman said his involvement in the Indiana dispute has no bearing on the Glendale deal.
